


Every Breath You Take

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fix-It, Multi, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Team Feels, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 21:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12566348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: For a fix-it request on Tumblr. Full, spoilery summary inside.





	Every Breath You Take

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt request on Tumblr: _Stoncy fic request: Jonathan and Nancy collapse in his room after bringing Will home. Steve joins._ And then 4K of feels spilled out of my keyboard.
> 
> The idea of everyone ending up in a sleepover at Joyce's house is something that became total headcanon for me after reading [this absolutely wonderful fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12555400) by the equally wonderful [maplemood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood); you should all go read. :> (lol, a fic which also has a lyric from the same song as a title, which I didn't even realize 'til I went to reread it. OOPS. Total accident, I swear!)

There were more people right now in his house than Jonathan ever remembered being in his house before -- well, aside from earlier tonight. Somehow it seemed like there were even more of them now than before, because everyone had split off into different rooms and he couldn't seem to turn around without tripping over somebody. Before, there had always been something to do, plans to make, monsters to fight. Now there were just ... too many people.

His mom had put Will to bed and was sitting with him, stroking his hair while Will slept. Jonathan sat with them for awhile, but eventually he wandered out, past little knots of people that he somehow felt like he should acknowledge, but wasn't sure how. He was, in particular, trying not to look at Steve, who was sitting on the floor with a couple of the kids -- Will's friend Dustin and that red-haired girl who had shown up from God only knew where -- fussing over him.

"That's gonna leave a scar, dude."

"Yeah, where's your medical degree from again, dipshit? Ow!"

Jonathan slunk past them, telling himself he didn't need to be avoiding people in his own damn house, telling himself he hadn't done anything wrong, didn't have anything to feel guilty about, let alone anything involving _Steve Fucking Harrington,_ of the perfect hair and perfect fancy car and perfect house and perfect social life --

"Ow!" Steve said again, and this time there was a little crack in his voice that made Jonathan look over his shoulder to see Dustin wincing and looking miserable and mumbling, "Sorry, sorry."

God damn it.

He should've been on top of the world right now. His family was okay, the girl of his dreams loved him back (and was around here somewhere, if he could just figure out where she'd gotten off to) ...

... and he was wasting it on feeling sorry for Steve Goddamn Harrington.

Annoyed with himself, and with Steve, and with the world in general, he opened the door to his room.

"Hey," Nancy said softly.

She was lying on his bed, fully clothed on top of the covers, on her side facing him. All his irritation and exhaustion fell away at the sight of her face, her hair spilling around it, her eyes warm and inviting.

He closed the door softly and went to sit on the edge of the bed, pulling off his shoes while Nancy curled quietly around him. 

"I was looking for you," he murmured, and smiled. "Things are always in the last place you look."

"Everything was too much," she whispered, pressing her cheek against his hip. "I just needed to ... you know. Get away."

He ran his fingers through her hair. "I understand. Totally."

"I know you do."

He didn't take off more than his shoes. Instead he rolled onto the bed and curled together with her, body curving into body, like two pieces of a puzzle clicking together. Weariness came crashing back down on him, and he closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair, while her arms came up to wrap around his back.

For a little while they just lay like that, twined in each other. Outside his room, Jonathan heard snatches of voices, the creak of a floorboard, Hopper's gruff voice growling something, his mom answering. One of the little kids giggled, he couldn't tell which one.

But he couldn't actually seem to fall asleep. Will was okay, Jonathan told himself. Will wasn't sick, he wasn't drugged, he wasn't in a coma. He was just sleeping. He was going to be fine.

And Mom was okay. And ... and ...

Damn it. He sat up, rubbing his gritty eyes.

"What is it?" Nancy asked quietly in the dark beside him. She wasn't asleep, either.

"Steve," Jonathan said on a sigh. He wasn't certain that was really what was nagging at him, the unfinished feeling, until he said it aloud.

Nancy sat up like a jack-in-the-box. "I know."

They sat together in the dark, fingers entwined. After a little while, Jonathan asked, "Are you ... over him? Do you think?"

"I don't know," she said after a minute. "I mean ... this is all so confusing. I don't know about any of it. The way I feel about you ..." She touched him in the dark, palm brushing across his chest. "It's not how I feel about him. Not really. But I don't know. Steve and I have been together so long now that it's ... we're Steve-and-Nancy. All one word. It's all just a mess."

"You shouldn't stay with someone just because of inertia, or ... or whatever."

"I _know_ that," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder, and quieter, "I wasn't."

Jonathan stared into the dark, at the stripe of light under his door. Footsteps passed, creaking in the hallway. Outside the house, a car door slammed. Someone leaving? Getting something out of one of the cars? He wasn't sure if everyone planned to spend the night or if people were going to start trickling out. It must be close to dawn anyway.

"Nancy," he said, very softly. "Would it be weird if I go out there and -- and ask him to come in here? Would that bother you?"

She tensed against him, her fingers pausing in their slow sweep across his skin. "Would it bother _you?"_

"I don't know," he admitted.

There was a long silence. More voices out in the living room, quiet kids' voices, his mom. Then Nancy said, "I should be the one to ask him."

Jonathan shook his head. "I think it'd be better coming from me."

Her head tipped back. It wasn't completely dark; the light coming in from under the door made her eyes luminous. "Are you okay with it?"

"I don't know," he said again, and after a moment, "But I know what it feels like, sitting out there, when you're -- when we're in here."

"It's not right to invite him out of pity."

"I'm not."

More silence, then she nodded quietly against his shoulder.

Jonathan got up and left the bedroom.

Things had gotten quiet enough that he'd thought most of the -- guests? visitors? extra family? must have left, but that turned out to not be the case. Instead, it looked like his mom had collected all the extra sheets, pillows, sleeping bags, and spare blankets in the whole house and spread them out in the living room, turning it into a kind of a slumber party. The TV was playing low, and Mike and Eleven sprawled in a heap on the couch. His mom and Hopper were talking quietly in the kitchen over cups of something he guessed was probably not coffee. 

Steve was sitting on the floor in a circle with Dustin, the red-haired girl, and Will's other friend Lucas, playing a card game. Blankets and pillows were scattered around, and the redhead was sprawled with a pillow tucked under her head and her cards held sideways. It looked like the whole group of them were prepared for the possibility that they might just fall over and sleep where they were.

Jonathan approached them quietly. Steve looked even worse up close; he'd definitely had the crap kicked out of him, worse than Jonathan had managed to do it that one time. The fact that his face was haphazardly bandaged and painted with iodine didn't really help.

"Got any threes?" he asked Lucas, slurring slightly through his swollen lips.

"Go fish."

"Fuck," Steve muttered and reached for the card pile. Then he looked up and saw Jonathan. There was an awkward pause, during which time the other kids clued in and sat up from their various sprawled positions.

"You, uh ..." Jonathan began. Fuck. Steve looked _bad._ Dustin had been right, some of those cuts really might leave a permanent mark. "What happened to you, anyway?"

"You didn't hear?" Steve asked. He started to grimace, winced, and then winced again at whatever the first wince had tugged on. "I got my ass kicked. Again."

"Don't listen to him, he was awesome," Dustin said promptly. Jonathan didn't miss the quick flash of something -- gratitude, warmth, maybe even delight -- that crossed Steve's face as his eyes flicked to the younger kid. "I mean, you _did_ get your ass kicked, it's true, but you got your ass kicked being _awesome."_

"Yeah, he stood up right in Billy's face and was like, 'Get out and leave my friends alone or I'll beat your face in,'" Lucas declared, demonstrating with an air punch.

"That's not what I --"

"And then he was like, pow," Dustin added, with a wild mock swing that nearly clipped the redhead in the ear.

"Hey!" she protested.

"And then Billy like, knocked Steve into the --"

"We can skip this part," Steve interrupted.

"Who's Billy?" Jonathan asked. No one appeared to hear him.

"And Max was all -- stab! -- with the, what do you call it, the needle --"

"Syringe, it's called a syringe."

"And he just _went down,_ dude, it was incredible --"

"Hey!" Hopper loomed in the kitchen doorway. "People are trying to sleep. You kids keep it down in here."

Everyone subsided into a guilty silence until he slouched back to the kitchen and dropped into the chair beside Jonathan's mom, who pointed her finger at Jonathan (like _he'd_ been doing anything), then in the general direction of Will's room, and waited 'til she got a nod out of him.

Jonathan looked back down at Steve and the little-kid circle. The silence stretched out, broken only by the sound of turned-down voices on a late-night infomercial from the TV. And it slowly dawned on him, the way the three kids were grouped around Steve, looking up at Jonathan. Their body language more than anything else.

Like they wanted to protect Steve ... from _him._ Like if he took one more step toward Steve, or said anything out of line, he was gonna get jumped by three angry middle-schoolers.

What the actual hell. His whole life had turned into a Twilight Zone episode.

"How's Nance?" Steve asked quietly, his normally expressive face noncommittal, though the bruising might have something to do with that.

"She's ... okay. Dealing. Listen, I wanted to ..." Jonathan jerked his head in the general direction of the hallway. "Talk?"

Steve looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and tossed down his cards. "Saved by the bell, munchkins," he told the kids as he got up.

"Yeah right," Lucas said, snatching up Steve's cards to look at them. "Ha. Knew it. You were goin' down in flames, Harrington."

But he was still watching out of the corner of his eye; they all were. Dustin scrambled to his feet, too. Steve shook his head, and Dustin sat back down in the kid circle, but kept watching -- they all did -- as Steve and Jonathan went into the dark hallway.

"Little jerks, right?" Steve said. He tried to laugh; it fell flat. "They're okay, though. They're good kids. I don't think we realized what adorable little dorks we were at that age, either."

 _I knew I was a dork because kids like you never let me forget it._ But that wasn't what he'd come out to say. And ... at some point you had to kinda start letting that stuff go.

Steve had gone silent, waiting for Jonathan to make the next move. When Jonathan didn't say anything -- he still wasn't sure what to say, or for that matter, what he actually wanted -- Steve crossed his arms over his chest in a brittle, defensive kind of way. (And why had he never noticed, until now, how much of Steve's confidence was pure show?)

"So, if you just brought me in here to stare at me, I've got a high-stakes game of Fish going out there --"

"No," Jonathan said quickly. "I just wanted to ..." He stopped again and put his hand on the knob of the door to his room.

The problem with him and Steve was that, well -- they were what they were. Steve was a rich douche with perfect hair. Jonathan was the weirdo loner in the corner. The only thing they had in common, the only thing they'd ever had in common, was Nancy.

Except that wasn't entirely true, was it? They'd fought a demogorgon together. And yeah, they'd tried to go back to their ordinary lives after that, but on some level they must have both known that they couldn't.

Maybe the past year would have been easier on all three of them if they'd just talked about it once in a while.

Maybe it was time to stop making the same mistakes over and over.

"... just wanted to ask if you'd like to come in," he said, and opened the door.

Nancy was lying down when the door opened, but she sat up, blinking in the block of light coming in from the living room. Steve stopped dead in his tracks, looked at her and then at Jonathan, and the look on his face was --

Hurt. No. Devastated.

That look kicked Jonathan under the ribs because what he saw reflected in Steve's blackened eyes was the same way he'd felt throughout grade and middle school, whenever one of the other kids extended a hand in fake friendship only to have it snatched away so they could make him the butt of whatever joke they were planning.

Steve opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and started to turn away.

"Wait!" Jonathan caught his arm, at the same time as Nancy jumped up off the bed, crying, "Steve!"

Steve jerked his arm away from Jonathan's hand. "Look, I don't know what you two are --"

"Steve, it's not what you think, whatever it is that you think." Nancy was catching at him with her hands now, drawing him into the room. "We just -- we wanted to -- Look, it's late, we're tired, everybody's tired."

"We just wanted to sleep," Jonathan said.

"And it didn't feel right and we weren't sure why and -- Steve, please, come, sit."

She got him to sit down on the edge of the bed, and sat beside him. Jonathan hesitated: what he wanted to do was sit with Nancy, but that felt too much like using her as a wall between himself and Steve. Instead, he shut the door, plunging them back into near-darkness, and then sat on Steve's other side.

He could feel Steve's acute tension next to him, smell the sharp medical scent of the disinfectant and something lightly floral that was probably whatever the hell Steve used to make his hair do that.

"I don't know what's going on?" Steve said faintly.

Nancy gave a soft laugh in the darkness. "That's okay. Neither do we."

There was movement next to him. Jonathan thought she might have taken Steve's hand. Jonathan's own hands felt like they took up way too much space in his lap. He felt like he should be doing something with them, but he wasn't sure what. Taking Steve's hand? Nancy's?

This wasn't supposed to be so goddamn complicated. For once in his life, he'd finally gotten the girl. And now here he was with Steve Harrington between them, literally as well as metaphorically.

And yet, it was better than knowing Steve was sitting out there in the living room, and he wasn't even sure why.

"So, are we like --" Steve began. He paused. "Are we broken up, or together, or what? Help me out here, Nance."

"I don't know," Nancy said plaintively. "I just, I'm tired, and it's late, and can't we maybe figure things out in the morning?"

Finally, there was something Jonathan could do that he knew how to do. He'd had more than enough practice at making his kid brother go to bed, or his mom go to bed. He was used to wrangling tired people who didn't know how to do what was good for them. Now he gave Steve a little push, pushing him down onto the bed. Steve didn't put up a fight. It seemed like he'd given up on trying to figure things out and was just going with it now.

There was some creaking of bedsprings. Someone whacked into something with a thump. Nancy said "Ow!", and then there was a gasp and what sounded like some of Jonathan's records getting knocked off the shelf above the bed.

"Hey," Jonathan said. "Guys."

"We're not doing anything!" Steve yelped.

"That's not what I meant. Stop messing with my stuff."

"We weren't trying to do that either!"

"It's a small bed," Nancy said. She gave a slightly hysterical giggle. "Too small for three people, I think."

"Okay," Jonathan said, feeling a vague sort of responsibility as the host, or at least the owner of the room. "Let's put everything down on the floor, then."

Scuffling around in the dark, they got the sheets and blankets off the bed and into a heap on the floor. Jonathan felt his way to the closet and got out the extra cold-weather blankets that had somehow escaped his mom's top-to-bottom ransacking of the house for anything that could be contributed to the slumber party in the living room.

The floor was uncomfortably hard, but they wriggled around in the dark and finally got themselves in something like a sort-of-comfortable pile, tangled up in blankets, with Steve toward the wall and Nancy wrapped around him and Jonathan wrapped around her.

"You can leave if this is weird," Nancy said anxiously into the dark and the quiet, once they'd finally stopped moving around.

"Who were you talking to?" Jonathan asked into her hair.

"Either of you."

"It _is_ weird," Steve said, and after a moment, "But not, like, bad weird."

The funny thing was, that actually made sense, maybe only because they were all so tired that anything would make sense by now. Jonathan buried his face in Nancy's hair. One of his arms was over her and therefore, by extension, over Steve too; he could feel Steve's muscular shoulder under his hand. He spread out his fingers and curled them around Steve's arm. Steve tensed a little, and then slowly, bit by bit, relaxed. It was weird having not just one person, but _two_ people, breathing next to him.

Weird ... but not bad weird.

It just felt better knowing where everyone was.

The rest they could sort out in the morning.

* * *

**Epilogue: The Snow Ball**

"You look great, okay? Now you're gonna go in there -- you look like a million bucks -- and you're gonna slay 'em dead."

"Like a lion," Dustin said.

Steve watched the kid run off toward the middle school -- they grow up so fast, he thought, pulling the car around to park behind the school. He sauntered inside, looking around for Nancy and Jonathan.

He found Nancy in charge of the punch. "I don't know about this," he said, leaning on the table. "Did you tell 'em what happened the last time someone left you alone with a punch bowl?"

"Steve, you idiot, you know there's no alcohol in this, right?" She leaned across the table to poke him in the red sweater. "You're not dressed up."

"Yeah, I'm just dropping off Dustin. Figured I'd come in and mingle. Ansel Adams is around here somewhere, I assume."

" _Jonathan_ is taking pictures of the kids in their little tuxes and dresses." She grinned as another swarm of middle schoolers went past. "Were we ever that tiny? Aren't they cute?"

"Not nearly as cute as you."

Nancy rolled her eyes as he started to sidle around behind the punch table. "No PDAs. We're supposed to be setting a good example for the midlets."

"Fine, if you're going to cruelly spurn me, I'll go see what Jonathan's up to."

"Say hi for me." She smiled at him, and his stomach flipped the way it always did, the way it had since the first time she'd ever smiled at him like that.

He found Jonathan, as predicted, over in the corner where they'd put up the kiddie-prom-photo setup. Steve hung around, hands in pockets, while Jonathan finished shooting a group of giggling middle-school girls with their hair teased up in elaborate 'dos. 

"I know you're there," Jonathan remarked, cranking the film forward. He turned around with a quick grin, head ducked, smiling sideways, and that made Steve's stomach flip a little too, in the way it'd been doing lately.

"Yeah right," he said, "situational awareness, Byers." -- trying to play it cool, because first of all, as Nancy had said, _no PDAs,_ and second, if the thing with Nancy was weird right now, the thing with Jonathan was about a million times weirder. They hadn't gotten past the point of occasionally holding hands so far (well, that and sleeping in the same bed, when they could snatch a whole night together, but Nancy was always there too). But he'd noticed Jonathan looking at him a lot, and he knew what it meant when girls looked at you that way, and he kinda had a feeling that kissing wasn't out of the question at some point in the near future. 

"From the ..." Jonathan dropped his voice. "... monster-hunting expert."

"Dude, did _you_ fight off a pack of weird-ass alien dogs with a baseball bat? No? Then leave the advice to the experts."

And Jonathan just gave him a grin, even though he knew -- they both knew -- that Steve still flinched awake from nightmares at night. They both did too; he knew that. And, well. Somehow it was easier when he wasn't the only one, and it was _definitely_ easier when he didn't have to try to pretend like none of it ever happened. 

... Oh, for the parents, sure. For the normal world, sure. There was still a whole world out there of college applications and grades and bullies, full of people who had no idea that their town almost fell into a network of alien spore caverns and narrowly escaped a demon dog invasion a month ago.

But trying to be Normal Steve Harrington hadn't gotten him very far; it had just gotten him a breakup with the girlfriend he adored, and he'd ended up beating up demon dogs with a baseball bat in a junkyard anyway.

So hell, it wasn't easy for any of them -- for him and Jonathan and Nance, for the little kids, even (he suspected, though they were better at not showing it) for the Chief and Jonathan's mom. And so they leaned on each other. Had group sleepovers sometimes, when things got too bad. Talked about it, when they needed to.

Dustin had confessed that he kept the lights on at night, so Steve had told him that he still slept with a nailbat under his bed, and that had helped, a little.

And knowing that Nancy and Jonathan flinched awake at night with tiny whimpers, knowing it wasn't just him, did actually make it a little better.

"So, are you volunteering too?" Jonathan asked, reaching for another film canister from the camera bag at the base of the photography lights. "I thought you were working on your college applications tonight. Or ..." He grinned again, brief and bright. "More likely, watching Christmas movies on TV and eating junk food."

"Hey, I'll have you know I plan to put in at least half an hour on those applications before I even turn on the TV."

"They say a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy."

Steve snorted. "I'm just here to drop off Dustin. But I gotta pick him up afterwards, so ... you and Nance sticking around for cleanup?"

"That's the plan, yeah."

"Guess it wouldn't hurt me to push around a broom a little while," Steve said, and god, what uncharacteristic surge of responsibility had made him decide to spend the evening working on college essays when he could've been hanging around here all night admiring Nancy's hair and the line of her neck above that dress and _Jonathan in a tux?_ Deadlines, shmedlines.

He could just blow off the whole thing ... but he wasn't really dressed for a night out, and now Jonathan was turning around to take some more pictures anyway. It wasn't like they'd actually get to spend any time together if he did stay.

Coming back for cleanup would be better anyway.

"Don't work too hard, Byers."

Jonathan glanced over his shoulder with another quick grin, and tossed his head to flip his hair out of his eyes. "Yeah, try to get at least a paragraph written on that essay before you blow it off for cheesy holiday movies that are gonna make you cry."

Steve flipped him off. "I don't cry at holiday movies."

"Yeah maybe not, but Will told me you cried at the end of _Charlotte's Web_ the other night."

"Those little traitors. See if I ever rent movies for those pint-sized dipshits again."

"Nancy thinks it's cute."

"You told Nancy? You're a traitor too, Byers."

Jonathan fluttered his fingers in a brief wave. "See you after the dance."

"Later."

He walked back out to his car with a bounce in his step, whistling along to the gym's sound system blasting The Police for the kids to dance to. It was a long road to being okay after what they'd all been through, and a much longer road ahead ... but maybe, just maybe, they were starting to get there.


End file.
